Merry Christmas

The Spirit of Christmas

This image of Saint Nicholas as the Spirit of Christmas, I offer to all my Haystack readers as my “Merry Christmas” greeting. The painting is the work of this old folk artist who attempted to capture the abundantly lavish extravagance, the mystical charm and mirthfulness of Christmas. This image of Saint Nicholas is a Kansas prairie icon that like all icons invites one to carefully decode the meaning of all its symbols and wealth of images. However, while sumptuously opulent, this image fails to even come close to encapsulating the implications of the Incarnation—God assuming as God’s own our human nature not only in Jesus, but also in each of us and in all of humanity. Christmas then is a global feast of all peoples of all religions. In this Christmas icon, St Nicholas carries a big heavy bag of gifts to signify that December 25th is the feast of gifting. The gifts in his bag are exceedingly exceptional—they all lack strings! That makes them truly extraordinary since typically our presents have tied to them invisible strings, requirements that gratitude must be expressed for the gift! St. Nicholas and Santa Claus are the Patron Saints of Anonymous Giving, and as such they challenge each of us who gives a gift this Christmas. Both of these men are notorious for giving gifts and then disappearing instead of waiting around to be thanked! Every gift given without personal strings invisibly attached, even the tiniest string of the giver expecting his or her present to delight the receiver, is a double gift. Not only do such stringless gifts carry the second gift of freedom from feeling bound to respond to it, they also wear a holy halo. Giving gifts without expecting any acknowledgement is engaging in the Divine Art of gifting practiced by our generous God. The Divine Giver who lavishes daily upon us an avalanche of gifts does not require, nor expects or needs us to say, “Thank you.” God gives simply for the pure wholesome joy of giving. These twelve days of the Christmas season give us time to attempt to give our gifts as does Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas and God.

A Christmas Gift We Fear to Use

Doomsday is this Friday the 21st, the end of the 5,125-year cycle of the Mayan Calendar. For countless people this means the apocalyptic end of the world! Store shelves in some cities in Russia are stripped bare of candles, bread, kerosene, matches and sugar as the fearful prepare for Friday’s catastrophe. Yet for the Mayans the end of one calendar era simply meant the start of a new one. Planet earth will end cataclysmically—in about 6 billion years when our day star the sun exhausts all its hydrogen. Then, as it devours its helium, it will rapidly expand to 100 times its present size, engulfing our earth and vaporizing it in its death struggle. Dire predictions of the end of the world have existed for thousands of years before Bethlehem’s first Christmas. Our prehistoric relatives lived these days in December with great primal horror, believing the sun was dying as the sunlight decreased and the frigid darkness increased. On December 21st, the winter solstice, they ritually kindled fiery bonfires and made sacrifices to bring back the shrinking sun. Since the dawn of time the constant companion of humans has been fear: the terror of prehistoric monstrous beasts, death, pestilence, war, the whip, slavery, and whoever was the Caesar of the day. Religion was born out of fear. Fright of the fickleness of gods produced altars, temples, blood-spattered rituals and human sacrifices to appease them. From prehistoric to modern times, religion festers and feeds on fear. For centuries an idle thought contrary to a dogma caused terror of the Inquisition, the terror of excommunication and the greatest fear of all—hell! Even today many are haunted by the possibility of spending an eternity in hellish, painful punishment. The very first Christmas wish wasn’t “Merry Christmas,” but rather “Do not be afraid.” It was spoken to terrified shepherds who were told, “A savior has been born to you, and you’ll find him in manger.” A savior is a liberator! When that infant in the manger grew to manhood he became a great rescuer of those frightened to death of a Judgmental God, of the power of the Temple and its fear-mongering priesthood. Repeatedly, about all of life’s terrors, he taught, “Fear not!” As it is said, “Perfect love casts out fear.” (1 Jn.4: 18) The finest of all Christmas gifts is freedom from fear, which removes the greatest obstacle to your happiness. To enjoy using your Christmas Liberator’s gift, think for yourself rather than letting others think for you, confidently following the quiet voice of your conscience, and do not be afraid of what others think or say about you. Walking in the footsteps of the Great Liberator-Rescuer may you have a happy Christmas day and a life full of happy days.

No Room In the Inn

The busiest days of the entire year are these just before Christmas when we rush from one thing to another trying to accomplish all that must be done—and we hate being interrupted whenever we’re in a hurry to complete a task. Woe to the saboteur of someone’s schedule! Regardless who she or he is, they easily can become a victim of a blistering outburst of angry annoyance. When we have no room for anything more, unexpected demands made on our time are greatly resented. Our clocks lack emergency switches able to expand our ever-shrinking time with an additional thirty to forty-five minutes with which to react to some petition. Therefore, some have posted on the doors to their offices—or their hearts—an invisible sign that is their version of the answer to that famous request in the gospel Christmas story, “No room in the Inn-tricately crowded agenda of my day.” So wise men and women—not on camels, but on tight schedules—must always be able to create room for the unexpected time beggars. They do so because of the wise advice given to the Greeks in the Odyssey: “All strangers and beggars are from Zeus, and a gift, though small, is precious!” And early Christians were likewise advised in the letter to the Hebrews: “Do not neglect being hospitable, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.” Christmastide is renowned for telling stories, so I ask the pardon of old friends as I retell one of my favorites: Once a man died and awoke to find himself seated alone in what appeared to be a waiting room. Leaning his head against the wall he could faintly hear voices on the other side he presumed were a committee or jury since they were deciding his ultimate fate. He heard them speaking of his good deeds, his charity to the poor and devotion to prayer. But just as they seemed about to announce his reward, louder voices objected, “True, true; he did do some good in his life. Yet every time that we came to visit him he always became greatly agitated, referring to our visitations as interruptions!”

God Fearing Atheists

Today’s reflection continues the previous one of how God assumed our human nature, as God’s own, in Jesus and all humanity. In church language, this reality which Christmas celebrates is called “the Incarnation.” It proclaims the Christian belief that by his teachings, deeds and unconditional love, Jesus of Galilee revealed God who had assumed human nature. However, if asked to believe in the divine indwelling in their human natures, Christians become atheists. The problem isn’t that they think God is incapable of this marvel, but rather the implications of having to live what they believe. Third-century St. Athanasius anticipated their dread when he said, “God became man that man might become God!”

While seeming unbelievably impossible, believing that God has saturated your humanity is the best gift you can give to those you love and the world this Christmas. Believe in and allow that mysterious hidden Presence in your humanity to become outwardly visible in your daily life as did your Teacher, Jesus. This is a homemade gift of daily striving to reshape your thoughts, words and actions to be Godlike, and to mirror the Sacred Mystery whose fullness fills your flesh. You can complain: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’m too old to make such drastic changes in my behavior.” Yet at age thirty the Galilean Jesus was an old man—and he was able to change. Only at that age do the earliest Gospels of his life, teachings, parables and works give evidence of the Divine Presence in his human nature. Jesus was truly an elder because seventy-five percent of Palestinians were already dead by the age of twenty-five. Contrary to art images, when Jesus announced God’s Domain had arrived, his face was wrinkled, teeth were missing, and his hair was graying to white. Surely he looked as aged as a person of seventy today. This rapidly accelerated aging was caused by his dreadfully poor peasant diet and the endless severe hardships of daily life. Don’t be an atheist! Don’t try to use your age as an excuse not to allow your God-soaked human nature to be transparent in what you say and do. Strive today to be as God-like as you can for family, friends and strangers so that this Christmas you will be the best of all gifts!

Edward Hays

Haysian haphazard thoughts on theinvisible and visible mysteries of life.